Welles, Orson

Welles, Orson, 1915–85, American actor, director, and producer, b. Kenosha, Wis. From childhood he evinced a precocious talent and lofty sense of self-assurance in theatrical matters. He began acting in the theater during the early 1930s, and in 1937 directed several Federal Theatre productions and organized the Mercury Theatre company in New York. In 1938 a radio adaptation of H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds, done in the style of a news broadcast, panicked the listening public and brought Welles national attention. He departed for Hollywood the following year. For RKO he cowrote, produced, directed, and starred in his first film, Citizen Kane (1941), considered by many to be the greatest film ever made. Welles brought technical brilliance, a precise sense of casting, and a complex narrative structure to bear on a teasingly ambiguous portrait of an American tycoon. He won an Academy Award for the screenplay, but never enjoyed such acclaim again.

After Citizen Kane Welles clashed constantly with studio chiefs and was never again able to exert such absolute artistic control or achieve such creative success. His other films include The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), The Lady from Shanghai (1948), Othello (1952), Touch of Evil (1958; restored and reworked according to Welles's instructions, 1998), The Trial (1963), and Chimes at Midnight (1966). Welles's booming voice and air of authority made him a popular film actor and occasional off-screen narrator, appearing in films such as Jane Eyre (1943), The Third Man (1949), Catch-22 (1970), and Someone to Love (1987). Beginning in the 1970s, he also became a popular figure on television, in commercials and as a frequent guest and occasional host on talk shows.

Bibliography

See O. Welles et al., This Is Orson Welles (rev. ed., 1998); biographies by F. Brady (1989), C. Higham (1985), B. Leaming (1985), S. Callow (2 vol., 1996–), J. McBride (rev. ed. 1996), and D. Thomson (1996); studies of his films by C. Higham (1970), P. Cowie (1972), H. James (1991), A. Bazin (1992), and P. Conrad (2003); H. J. Mankiewicz and P. Kael, The Citizen Kane Book (1971); R. L. Carringer, The Making of Citizen Kane (1985); C. Heylin, Despite the System: Orson Welles Versus the Hollywood Studios (2005); The Battle over Citizen Kane (documentary film, 1995).

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Welles, (George) Orson

(born May 6, 1915, Kenosha, Wis., U.S.—died Oct. 10, 1985, Los Angeles, Calif.) U.S. film director, actor, and producer. He began acting on stage at 16 and made his Broadway debut in 1934. He directed an all-African American cast in Macbeth for the Federal Theatre Project. In 1937 he and John Houseman formed the Mercury Theatre, creating a series of radio dramas, attempting to mount Marc Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock in the face of determined opposition, and winning notoriety with their panic-producing broadcast of War of the Worlds (1938). Welles then moved to Hollywood, where he cowrote, directed, produced, and acted in the classic Citizen Kane (1941), noted for its innovative narrative technique and atmospheric cinematography and considered among the most influential movies in film history. His other films include The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), The Stranger (1946), The Lady from Shanghai (1948), Touch of Evil (1958), and Chimes at Midnight (1966). His problems with Hollywood studios curtailed future productions, and he moved to Europe. He was also notable as an actor in Jane Eyre (1944), The Third Man (1949), and Compulsion (1959).

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Welles, (George) Orson (1915–85) stage/movie actor, director; born in Kenosha, Wis. Son of a wealthy inventor and a concert pianist, he was a precocious child who staged miniproductions of Shakespeare in his house. When his mother died in 1925, he went on a world tour with his father, then attended a private school in Illinois where he continued to direct plays (1926–31). With his father's death in 1927, he became the ward of a Chicago physician, Dr. Maurice Bernstein. Welles turned down college and set off for Ireland on a sketching tour—he had shown talent as an artist—and ended up acting with Dublin's famous Gate Theatre (1931). He returned to the U.S.A. in 1932, toured with Katharine Cornell's road company, and made his Broadway debut—as Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet —in 1934, the year he also gave his first radio performance. With John Houseman, he collaborated on productions for the Phoenix Theatre Group and the Federal Theater Project; they then founded the Mercury Theatre in 1937, noted for such productions as an all-African-American Macbeth. In 1938, Welles and Houseman began to produce plays on their Mercury Theatre on the Air; that October 30, as a Halloween spoof, they broadcast a dramatization of H. G. Wells's War of the Worlds, so realistic in conveying a Martian invasion that it led to a literal panic in the Northeast. His growing reputation led to his being hired by RKO in Hollywood but none of his initial projects got into production. Then he made Citizen Kane (1941), which despite its success with critics and a few metropolitan audiences, was not all that successful at the time. Two more movies, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) and The Lady from Shanghai (1948), were heavily edited by the studios and only years later recognized as superb works. From this point on, Welles suffered from his reputation as an erratic filmmaker who couldn't hold to budgets or schedules, and he would spend the rest of his life forced to seeking financing for his projects. By about 1946, he was effectively in exile in Europe where he continued to act in others' movies (The Third Man, 1949) to earn money so that he could make his own (Othello, 1952; Chimes at Midnight/Falstaff, 1966). Back in the U.S.A. by the mid-1970s, he found himself honored as one of the true geniuses of American movies, but thereafter he was reduced to appearances in grade-B movies, television talk shows, and television commercials. Several times divorced, overweight, with a resume that included many failed projects, he would have seemed a failure at his death had his rich life not produced so many original works.